


The Dollhouse Is Real

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Foxtrot [28]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, The Dollhouse - Fandom
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-13
Updated: 2016-03-13
Packaged: 2018-05-26 14:05:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6242356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the comment_fic prompt: any, any, i find pieces of myself everywhere, and i cut myself handling them. John comes clean with the leaders of Atlantis. Set in Season 5.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Dollhouse Is Real

"What is this about, Colonel?" Woolsey asked. He, Keller, Rodney, Ronon, Teyla, Lorne, Ceccoli, and Zelenka were all gathered in John's room.

John wasn't sure what to do with himself. They were crowded between him and the door. His knees were shaking and he wanted to sit down, but he couldn't cope with them looming over him. Lorne's expression was unreadable. Teyla looked concerned but ready to be supportive, whatever it was. Rodney looked ready to burst at the seams, the kid who knew the answer but who the teacher refused to call on. Zelenka looked like he needed to be somewhere else urgently but was here because Rodney had commanded it. And Woolsey looked cautious. Alert. But ready to be reasonable.

Ceccoli refused to meet his eyes.

Ronon looked bored. He reached out and picked up the knitting project on the desk, and inside John, Traci squeaked.

"Don't," John said automatically. "I don't have caps for those needles and if one of them comes out the entire thing will unravel and it's a very complicated pattern."

Keller and Woolsey raised their eyebrows.

Ronon set the knitting down with exaggerated care.

"I didn't know you knitted," Keller said.

_I don't,_ John wanted to say, but Traci smiled and said, "Since I was sixteen. Broke my leg and was holed up for six weeks unable to walk or dance and my grandma taught me so I'd stay busy."

Rodney's desperately supportive expression faltered, and John hissed, _No. Let me handle this._

_You're not handling this,_ the college student pointed out.

The CIA agent chimed in. _You're in the beginning stages of a panic attack._

_Take a deep breath,_ the English teacher instructed, and John had no choice but to obey.

"Is this about your hobbies? Because I have a very sensitive experiment –" Zelenka began.

The translator burst out in Czech, "You're swearing isn't nearly as creative as it could be because you think no one else understands you."

Zelenka froze.

Teyla said, "You could not do that before, could you?"

"Have you been able to understand me this whole time?" Zelenka asked.

John nodded. He was dizzy. His stomach was churning. He couldn't do this, shouldn't do this. But he had no choice. Rodney and Lorne knew. He had to convince them he wasn't a liability, that he wasn't crazy, that they had to let him stay.

Zelenka was turning red. "Why did you tell no one?"

Teyla must have sensed John's distress, because she broke in, using her soothing negotiator voice. "Perhaps he was just being polite."

"If I'd known you spoke Czech, I'd have asked for your help translating forever ago," Rodney said.

Keller stepped forward, brow furrowed with concern. "John, are you all right? You look ready to faint."

He did feel ready to faint. The imprints panicked. Some tried to rally around him, to bolster him and make him feel better, but their collective chatter was making his head hurt. The others squabbled, trying to decide who should take over and handle this conversation.

Everywhere John looked, pieces of him were scattered. Ronon was reaching for the knitting again. Woolsey was peering at a law book the law clerk had checked out of the base archive on his last designated Sunday. Teyla had noticed the architect's open sketchbook. So may pieces of John scattered, shattered, and every attempt to collect them and arrange them into a coherent whole made him bleed even more. The architect was craving coffee. The pianist wanted him to close his eyes and shut out one sense completely. The college student thought getting blind drunk was an excellent plan. John couldn't breathe.

There were too many of them and only one of him and only the illusion that John Sheppard was real had kept this all at bay.

_You can do this,_ Joe said. _You can. You have to._

John's knees buckled, and he sat down hard on the edge of the bed. Keller cried out, dashed toward him, and then Keller and Teyla and Ronon were all bundling him out of his quarters and down to the infirmary.

"Keller," John said, "clear out all non-essential personnel. Please."

Ronon wrangled him onto a cot. Keller checked his forehead, checked his breathing. John caught her gaze and held it.

"Please," he said again.

Keller dismissed the rest of the medical staff. It was a miracle there were no other patients.

"Before I explain," John said, "I need you to hook me up to your fancy Ancient scanner and do a scan of my head. Otherwise none of this will make sense."

Woolsey frowned. "You're not making sense right now."

"You should do it," Ceccoli said quietly.

Teyla blinked at him, like she'd forgotten he was with them.

"Does this have something to do with your time in Afghanistan?" Woolsey asked. Of course he'd have been given full access to John's military file - at least, the version of the file Rossum let people see.

"You'll see," John said.

Woolsey hesitated, but Ronon said, "Do it. John doesn't ask for stupid things."

Woolsey nodded at Keller, and Lorne went to help her arrange the machine. John lay back, held still while Keller ran the scan.

"I'm not showing anything unusual, John," she said. Everyone else peered at the screen, but none of them really knew what they were looking at.

Except Zelenka, who pointed. "What is that?"

"A neural net that neurologists installed to repair the damage John sustained during his helicopter crash in Afghanistan," Keller said. "It's in his file."

The imprints were impressed. That was how Rossum explained state-of-the-art neural tech

Woolsey frowned. "Colonel Sheppard didn't crash in Afghanistan. He disobeyed a direct order trying to rescue downed comrades, but he escaped unscathed."

It was Jennifer's turn to frown. "But it says –"

"If you scan Ceccoli," John said, "he'll have the same thing." He met Ceccoli's gaze. Ceccoli nodded. The imprints were torn between being relieved and even more nervous than before.

"Because he was injured in Afghanistan too," Keller protested, but Ceccoli submitted himself to a scan with an earnestness that made Teyla and Ronon look at him askance.

Everyone else crowded around the screen of Ceccoli's scan.

"What are the chances that they sustained the exact same kind of injury that would require the same treatment?" Teyla asked.

"Slim," Jennifer said. "Especially since the file says Anthony was caught by a roadside bomb, not a chopper crash."

Woolsey's expression turned pinched. "What's going on, Colonel?"

The law clerk and architect murmured warnings about Woolsey. For all that he was a civilian and mostly a desk-jockey, he had the potential to be incredibly dangerous to John.

"What you're seeing," John said, and it took every ounce of his self-control to keep his voice steady, "is called 'active architecture'. It allows someone with the appropriate technology to imprint other personalities onto my brain."

Woolsey opened his mouth to ask a question, but Rodney said, "Can you explain, from the beginning, what happened to you?"

John reached up and tugged off his wristband. Keller flinched when she saw the scar.

"This used to be a tattoo. We call them birth-marks, so if we ever get wiped and imprinted, other people can know who and what we really are."

Ceccoli tugged off his own wristband. There, in familiar inky cursive, were the words: _The Dollhouse is real. My name is Anthony Ceccoli._ "We got them when we broke out of the Dollhouse, briefly. Some of us made it all the way away. Some of us didn't."

"What did yours say?" Teyla asked.

John's voice caught in his throat.

_It's time,_ the imprints said.

" _The Dollhouse is real. My name is Joe Flanigan._ "


End file.
